'turning of age'

[Lynne Murphy]

In a BBC piece on American reactions to the royal engagement
(<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11769047>), I read this:

"I'm really excited as I was a huge fan of Princess Diana", says Margaret
Lynne, from Springfield in the state of Missouri. "To see her sons growing
up and for William to be turning of age and marrying is a very exciting
time for me," she adds.

'Turning of age' for 'coming of age' looked like a blending error to me
(turning 21/coming of age), but I see it has quite a few google hits.
There's only one hit ('turned of age')  from 1850 in Mark Davies' COHA.
Haven't found any remarks upon it in a quick search for some. Is this
'coming of phrase' well known or geographically specific?

Lynne

Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics
Director of English Language and Linguistics
School of English
Arts B348
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com

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